Knotted (Dark Faeverse #4)

Prologue

KNOTTED

The world ended fifty years ago, though you wouldn’t know it from the way the mountains still catch the dawn light, the way snow still settles on the peaks each winter like a blessing no one asked for.

The Sundering—that’s what the Fae call it, with the casual cruelty of naming something that broke everything humanity had built—tore holes in the fabric of reality itself, and through those holes came monsters.

Chaos-beasts with too many eyes and not enough soul, creatures that existed only to consume, to destroy, to remind us how small we’d always been.

We expected war when the Fae courts followed. Expected fire and blood, the collapse of whatever fragments we’d managed to hold together. Instead, we got something far more insidious.

We got protection.

The Stone Court rose first from the chaos, their Guardian a colossus of bronze skin and mountain magic who planted himself between the bleeding wounds in reality and the trembling human settlements below.

He promised safety. Promised to hold back the monsters, to give us time to rebuild, to let us pretend that survival was the same thing as living.

In exchange, he asked only for tribute—ore from the mines, metals from the forges, and eventually, inevitably, daughters from the villages.

It seemed like a fair trade, at first. Before we understood what we were really paying.

The tribute demands grew slowly, the way a vine creeps across a wall—so gradual you don’t notice until it’s already strangling everything it touches.

More ore. Rarer metals. And then the requests for “cultural exchange,” delivered with polite smiles and ancient eyes that saw right through our desperate pretense of choice.

Young women selected for their potential, spirited away to mountain fortresses where they would learn, we were told, their true purpose.

The transformed women sent letters home.

They arrived like clockwork, written in familiar hands but filled with unfamiliar words: I’m so happy here.

I’ve found my purpose. I never knew what I was missing.

The phrases repeated from letter to letter, village to village, year to year—the same hollow joy, the same empty reassurance, until the words stopped meaning anything at all.

Nobody talks about how those letters all sound the same.

Nobody mentions that the women who write them never visit home, not even for funerals, not even when their mothers are dying and calling their names.

Nobody asks why the families who “discover” omega daughters always seem to owe significant debts right before the diagnosis, or why the discovery always seems to happen to the prettiest girls, the strongest ones, the ones who might have been something if they’d been allowed to stay human.

Because asking those questions would mean admitting what we’ve become—livestock being bred for harvest by creatures patient enough to wait centuries, creatures who’ve learned that the sweetest meat comes from animals who walk willingly into the slaughterhouse.

Guardian Karax Terranus has defended Stone Court for seven hundred and thirty-four years, and in all that time, he has never once felt alive.

Oh, he’s been awake. He’s fought battles that reshaped mountains, taken lovers who worshipped his power, built a court that stands as testament to everything the Fae can achieve when they set their minds to dominion.

He’s watched human generations flicker past like candle flames—brief, bright, and ultimately forgettable.

He’s done everything a Guardian is supposed to do, been everything his people needed him to be.

But alive? Truly alive, the way he remembers feeling in those first wild centuries after his own awakening? That flame guttered out so long ago he’s half-convinced he imagined it.

No opponent has lasted thirty seconds against him in the arena.

Most surrender the moment they see his frame—eight feet of bronze-skinned muscle marked with silver veins that pulse with the mountain’s own magic, eyes like molten gold that see through armor and pretense alike.

He’s claimed omegas before, dozens of them over the centuries, willing women who sought his attention because of what he represented rather than what he was.

They submitted before he could earn their surrender, offered themselves before he could truly want them, and each time he’d felt the same hollow disappointment settle deeper into his chest.

None of them satisfied the hunger that gnaws at the core of him. None of them made him feel.

He doesn’t want someone who kneels because they’re afraid, or because they’ve calculated the advantages of his favor, or because their biology leaves them no choice.

He wants someone who looks at everything he is—all the power, all the danger, all the centuries of blood and patience—and chooses to fight anyway.

He wants someone who makes him earn it.

The prophecy says he’ll find her. Written in the language of creation itself, the words demand eight bonds between Fae rulers and human women of specific bloodlines—eight unions that will reshape the balance of power between worlds.

Three bonds have already been sealed: Thorn Court’s diplomatic seduction, where a prince wrapped a woman in luxury until she forgot she’d ever wanted freedom; Frost Court’s conditioning through discipline, where ice and denial carved submission into a willing vessel; Vine Court’s virgin corruption, where innocence was cultivated like a rare flower only to be plucked at the perfect moment.

Each success makes the next more certain, weaves the spell tighter around humanity’s throat.

Now it’s Stone Court’s turn. And Karax has already chosen his prize.

In a mountain village called Ironhold, a young woman with steel-gray eyes sharpens her blade and watches the Fae delegation wind up the narrow mountain path.

The morning mist clings to the rocks around her, cold and damp against her skin, but she doesn’t shiver.

She stopped letting herself feel the cold years ago, around the same time she stopped letting herself feel much of anything at all.

Her name is Hannah Mitchell, and she’s been the village protector since she was sixteen years old—since the night a chaos-beast tore through Ironhold and left her parents bleeding out on the smithy floor while she stood over their bodies with a sword she barely knew how to hold.

Eight years of being the one who steps forward when everyone else steps back.

Eight years of fighting monsters and negotiating with Fae and carrying burdens that should have broken her a hundred times over.

She’s so tired she can feel it in her bones, a weariness that sleep doesn’t touch.

But tired doesn’t matter. Tired has never mattered. The delegation is coming with demands she already knows they can’t meet, and someone has to stand between Ironhold and whatever the Fae want to take this time. Someone always has to stand.

It might as well be her. It’s always been her.

She doesn’t know that Karax has been watching her through scrying crystals, studying her the way a collector studies a rare specimen.

Doesn’t know that he’s catalogued her fighting style, mapped her courage, measured her bone-deep exhaustion and found it beautiful.

Doesn’t know how long his gaze has followed her, or how deliberately he’s shaped the circumstances that led her here.

Doesn’t know that he’s already decided she’ll be his—not because of prophecy or politics, but because she’s the first human in seven centuries who makes him feel something other than the endless, aching emptiness of immortality.

The fourth bond begins with a woman who thinks she’s making a sacrifice, trading her life for her village’s safety, walking into the monster’s den with her eyes wide open.

She doesn’t know she’s already been claimed.

She doesn’t know the monster has been waiting for her all along. Chapter 1: Hannah

The forge is cold.

I notice it every morning now—the way the metal sits silent in its rack, how thick ash has settled in the hearth where fire should be crackling and popping.

My father’s forge, my mother’s forge, and now mine for eight years.

But I haven’t had time to light it in weeks.

There’s always something else that needs doing.

Someone else who needs saving.

I run my fingers along the anvil’s edge, feeling the familiar pits and grooves worn smooth by three generations of Mitchells.

My father used to say the forge was the heart of Ironhold—that as long as the fire burned, the village would survive.

He died before he could see how wrong he was.

The fire went cold the night the chaos-beast tore through our home, and Ironhold has been dying by inches ever since.

But that’s not something anyone wants to hear, so I don’t say it.

The morning mist curls through the main square like fingers searching for something to grip.

I stand at the edge of the smithy’s shadow, a cup of cold tea forgotten in my hands, and watch the messenger’s horse pick its way up the narrow mountain path.

Stone Court livery—I can tell even at this distance by the bronze and gray colors, the way the rider sits his horse with that particular Fae arrogance.

Another tribute demand. It has to be. That’s all they come here for these days.

I set down the tea and check my weapons automatically.

Sword at my hip, knife in my boot, throwing blade tucked against my forearm.

I count the exits from the square—three, plus the rooftops if I’m desperate—and note the positions of the few villagers already awake.

Old Marta sweeping her doorstep. The baker’s boy hauling water from the well.

Councilman Harrick pretending not to watch me from his window.

None of them will help if this goes badly. They never do.